Wouldn’t that draw the ire of anti-monopoly and anti-collusion groups?

“Did you know that disco record sales were up 400% for the year ending 1976? If these trends continue… ayyyyyy!”

— Disco Stu (“The Twisted World Of Marge Simpson” 4F08)

Hey – the Amish still use the horse and buggy! By that logic, there should be room for the RIAA for a long time to come!

Actually it’s about 1/1000 of today’s computers, or $1.00.

I remember when I was 9 or 10 and I first started buying CDs. CDs were still pretty new at the time, and I remember guys in suits on MTV talking about how CDs would be 4 bucks per disc some day. They’re still 20 bucks. But the Trivium album I’m downloading will cost me nothing. Piracy wouldn’t be a problem if record companies would just fucking keep up with their own bullshit.

I would say that if anything, cost of mixing has gone down. Ironically, it follows the same model that everybody here is saying CD’s should follow; as technology gets better understood and more efficient to produce, it becomes more widespread, it can be sold for a lower price point while still making profit, and generally this starts price wars in the industries that use that technology as well. But actually, because of the RIAA’s tactics, major studio houses generally run at a loss, and many great ones are going out of business.

Part of the reason is that computers have become fast enough to handle extremely complex mixes. Mixes that even 5 years ago required thousands upon thousands in dedicated hardware. Most studio mixes use a ton of tracks, even for a 4 piece rock band. look at what I use:

7 tracks for the drums
3 tracks for bass
4 tracks for rhythm guitar
2 tracks for lead guitar
2 tracks for lead vocals
2 tracks for chorus vocals
plus a track for stick counts and a track for white noise

that’s 22 tracks, just for your standard rock band. Imagine a large band, or a DJ with all sorts of sound effect tracks. Mixing 20-30 tracks together takes some serious horsepower all by itself, but it doesn’t stop there. consider that all those tracks require at least a little reverb, compression, and EQ.

Until recently, such a mix required a large variety of effects which cost hundreds or thousands each, plus at least a 24 track mixing board, or a 16 track and a couple 4 tracks. then hooking it together required about a thousand dollars in cable. Alternately, you could have a computer mixing environment. Until recently, that required a whole bank of computers, and still required lots of external equipment, plus custom software. Then, even if you can afford all that, where you gonna put it?

Because all that stuff will fill a whole room. Oh, and you needed $2000 mixing monitors as well. And guess what? all that crap gets HOT, so you need great air conditioning…but your trying to HEAR in this room, so the AC has to be dead quiet.

Oh, and I’ve completely left out the rest of the studio, the actual performance room. The acoustics control of a pro studio is critical to the mix quality, and it requires the work of an experienced engineer. An engineer whose work runs $300,000 to $500,000 for a small to medium studio. That rooms also needs quiet AC, humidity control, and probably modification to the actual building structure. Don’t forget a wide selection of microphones, mic stands, and oh, more cable.

So that’s almost a million dollars in setup, plus rent on a large space.

Now you need acoustics engineers, mixing engineers, receptionists, managers, and maintenance people to run the place. You’ve got to keep the studio full just to keep the bills paid. forget recouping your construction costs!

So now that we all understand that a studio costs about a million to build, and millions annually to operate, don’t assume that the industry tactics only get applied to consumers. They’re constantly applying pressure for lower studio costs as well. It’s driving the studios out of business. They’re doing the same thing to the artists, and it makes the artists not want to work with the labels.

Enter technology.

Last year, I moved into a place with an extra large walk in closet. I immediately hopped on the internet and researched studio setups. I acoustically treated the closest, bought a couple industry standard mics, and a top of the line dual-core computer with a gig of ram. I bought software off the internet for less than $300 total, and most of the once thousands in effects, have been replicated in code for about $50 a pop. Some are even freeware.

Now, I have spent less than $2000, and while I can’t get quite the quality of a professional recording, it’s more than good enough for demos of local bands. I could easily get a larger room, spend another grand, take a local college class, and produce pro quality mixes.

Since most bands need acoustically treated practice space anyway, the space rent, while expensive, is already necessary anyway. Everything else is well within price. A band will spend that much on studio time in a single year. So the studio has actually been made nearly obsolete. More and more musicians are simply learning to do it themselves, taking more control of the creative process, and cutting out ALL the middle men. Suddenly, computers have made such a tactic affordable. It was unrealistic even 5 years ago.

So now you have Studios needing to charge more, cause they aren’t making enough recordings to stay afloat, you’ve got consumers getting pissed off at industry pricing and copyright tactics, and you’ve got artists slowly starting to walk away from the organized industry all together. Technology is conspiring to accelerate all these forces at the same time.

consumers now know they have the technology to have their music anytime, anywhere, and they are getting pissed that the industry is trying to withhold it. Artists now know that they, and their fans, are getting screwed at every turn, and they know they can record and promote themselves nearly as effectively now. And you have recording engineers realizing it’s better to work freelance, going under contract directly for the artist, in the artists own studio. The artist pays less and the engineer keeps almost all of it.

Anybody still wondering why the labels are so worried about their bottom line? When you hear that an album sells a million copies, at $18 a pop (probably $14 after retail takes it’s cut), and you know the studio time probably cost $100,000, advertising $500,000 and the artist only gets 1-2% of what’s left, you gotta wonder where all that extra cash is going. Cause that’s 14 million, minus about $900,000 in expenses, there’s still 13.1 million dollars left. Where’d it go? Yep, into the pockets of agents and executives, and lately, it’s safe to assume, lawyers.

Am I the only one that feels quality of music is important? By quality I mean sound and content.

More often than not the sound quality of a downloaded .mp3 is crap and they put restrictions on what and where you can play them from. So I don’t download music.

If I like the music I go buy the CD….. I haven’t bought any CD’s lately because… well… quite frankly the content of the music is horrible.

Instead of a 12 page insert with pictures on a CD put advertisements on it. Let the advertisors pay for the cost of the CD and give the product to your customers for next to nothing. The music shouldn’t be the main product. It should be the vehicle in which advertisements are delivered through. You can tell a lot about what a person will and will not buy if you know the type of music they listen to. To take it a step further give the record company / artist a cut of the profits made from ancillary sales made from those advertisements… good god… how hard is it really?

ad artwork. ok, sure. who’s gonna buy a cd with a tampax lable on it?

and what’s next? the cd’s 11 traks take up 43 minutes? give the other 37 for audio ads? or make the first 37 minutes the ads Which you can’t skip through? or have each track have ads that you have to listen to before the song starts.

great. our music gets even better…

If you got a double CD, 1/2 ads, then with a copy of Wave Studio or equivalent (free with your sound card) and a CD-R (

these RIAA @holes are running out of money to pay their lawyers

Of course cd’s should cost more – after all, they now need to pay the bill of their opponent attorneys as well 😉

The RIAA (and record companies) is/are trying to convert itself from the music industry to the legal industry if it increases the cost of CDs. Fewer people will be shell out the $$$$$$ for a CD (or any pre-packaged media) and either go without or use alternative means of obtaining music. The RIAA will cry foul as they are selling fewer CDs and then add more lawyers to sue individuals using less expensive techniques. Eventually they will run out of enough money to produce CDs as they will have to maintain lawyers. This will force the artists to use the internet to release their own music for much less money. The RIAA will eventually go belly up. Supply and demand is a wonderful thing for consumers.

As I grew into my teen years, I was hungry for music. So I joined a “music club”. Years later I realized what a fool I was for spending XX dollars for a tape and at least $2 for each tape on shipping????

I spent in my mind more on shipping than the worth of the music itself. And it never seemed to end. No matter how good the club sale was, I was always spending tons on each piece for shipping. It seemed that “The Industry” was making side money on my craving for what I thought were life enriching songs back then. Now it is just an expense, not pertinent to life, and it just makes me angry and sad both.

This really turned me off and today, I rarely listen to music. National Public Radio is my fare including some interesting music shows from time to time. I do NOT own an Ipod or any kind of MP3 device or player except for my movie DVD player with which I might rarely listen to a friend’s CD when she says I must.

The whole buying experience and disproportionate add-on costs have jaded me against music in general. Except for the Cincinnati Blues Society (God Bless their staff and participating artists). Suffice to say if it isn’t played within the context of a rented movie, then I may not have heard the song!

I know others who feel much the same. You’ve taken advantage when we were young and now you make such a fuss about it in our adult life. You folks have darkened the doors of artists whom I’m sure deserve to be heard, one way or another. Which ever way someone gets to hear music, increasingly it will be one which is: -very affordable, and -delightful.

When something is -delightful and -very affordable I’m more willing to part with my very hard earned money. But alas these are two things which seem to be glaringly absent in much of the music industry today!

While everything around us seems to be improving and evolving, why can’t you? I believe it is because you have the wrong focus on business. Spend some time taking quality courses and you’ll quickly realize exactly what I mean.

It could be caused by greed like so many think, or it could be your expenses could be streamlined a lot! This is were understanding all things quality comes in.

The CONSUMER needs to be delighted! Do that and things will change and you’ll be very happy too! The road to change can be easy or hard. Up front it will cost you dearly but pay out most handsomely for your commitment to the consumer. In every part of your business there is latent potential that is not producing desired and needed results.

The U.S. is falling behind in this understanding. This applies to all business from the Mom & Pops to national corporations. Do this and then be welcomed into our world and we’ll pay you for it!

Any economist knows that if you lower your offer (amount available) and the demand stays the same, prices will go up.

Therefore the RIAA should stop paying crappy “entertainers” and flooding the market with bad music at the same time would reduce the offer (available cds) and make it a less competitive market. That would drive the prices down.

But I guess there is money to be made and if there is room for all this crappy music, the price of cds is exactly where it should be. Stop controlling the price of cds and you will get the real price of cd. If competition drives the price down, then good. Your return should be the higher even if the margin is lower because you will sell more cds.

Another great shot in the foot. A “bullseye” this time.

Obviously the cocaine running from the hot and cold taps of the RIAA bathrooms is getting a bit expensive if they are complainging about the ‘low’ price of CD’s.

Record companies have very little to do with recording. As a matter of fact, they are a kind of specialized bankers, giving loans to recording artists, which they have to pay back later. Most artists are ripped off, seeing no money at all before their third album, when their best work has already been recorded. These “recording contracts” rip most of the rights of their work from the artists leaving them with few other sources of income.

No, the RIAA does not fight for the rights of artists. They fight for their own wallets. With current technology, I think artists should abandon the current model and start distributing their work themselves. That is the only way to break the power of these recording sharks. A simple example: an artist gets may be 5-10% of the price of a CD. Producing a CD is 1 dollar. Add another dollar for leaflet and box, another for transport, another dollar for the sales and we’re at 5 dollar. Where do you think the other 28 dollar goes??

Digital songs are even cheaper, say 20 – 30 cents a piece. There are dutch artists (Hans Dulfer) that have begun to distribute their work like that. Unprotected, on a memory stick. I hope more will follow.

First, if you think all CDs are created equal, like bananas, then you should listen to bananas. CDs are produced with different budgets, and we artists are not all Mariah Carey. If you are a big name and sell million of copies, you can sell for even $5 and still make a lot of money.

Second: much less known artists that sells at most a few thousand copies (and are supposed to live on that misery) should be allowed to price CDs much higher. Even $50. Tell me why otherwise you are willing to pay different amounts of money for books? Why are books different than CDs? ou are saying basically that CDs are like bananas. Just sell them by the pound then. Who cares about the time, effort and money put into it by the artists and musicians.

No thanks to the people like you that are willing to pay very high prices for books, magazines, DVDs, but pretend that music is free as some kind of natural law.